Sunday, April 13, 2008

Hosted and sponsored jointly by ME Research UK, and the Irish ME Trust , the New Horizons 2008: International Conference on ME/CFS Biomedical Research will take place on Tuesday 6th May 2008 in Cambridge, UK.

Now if you look at the line up of speakers there is something really odd, if you keep the RSM line up in mind. Why is this line up not dominated by psychiatrists as you would expect for a NEUROLOGICAL illness..................

Now I also need to rectify something and I might say it was my Bran flakes that got foggy again, aka my Brainfog, but it wasn't, I just misspelled the name of the Dean of the RSM, and someone kindly pointed that out to ME. Thanks.

I have mailed the Dean to apologise, his name should have been: Dr Scadding

The other things is, 001/7, you know our master blaster of espionage with ME, has been on the go again and he was persuaded to 12 sessions of CBT. Yes I don't know either why he would do so but he assured me that the professor who calls himself brilliant said it is the one and only treatment that has worked for himself...... or his bankaccount for that matter....

So 001/7, our espionage bloke with ME, who is not bisexual like the current 007, but he has no objection against Olga Curvova or whatever her name is to take the love scenes a bit further........ when no one is looking that is.........

Anyway, our 001/7 is a bit different from James himself, that is why we call him Earl Grey as you might know as with his ME he can't drink Martini's anymore, even if they are stirred and not shaken or the other way around. For whatever reason his body is alot more sensitive to alcohol and he has told me that he once got drunk from eating some liquor filled chocolate...

But he has assured ME that was all in the mind and he wants to be able to drink alcohol again instead of Earl Grey all day long, so he has just finished his 12 sessions of the magical mystery treatement aka the treatment that professor CBT and his TOP DOGINA use for anything and everything.

Some say they use it to make the trip to their place of work otherwise they are too scared to drive into London, others say he uses it to wash his car but we all know that the one and only reason he developed it is to be able to stand in front of a bunch of doctors at the RSM and continue to tell his porkies.......... about a disease he would not recognise if he would GET it himself.

I read on the internet that the professor cycled to France and back but he claimed that that was only possible because he had 6 sessions of CBT first, yes only six as he has had ELEVEN Million sessions so far anyway.....

Now to come back to 001/7, he was actually looking forward to his CBT sessions, you see he had just read one of many articles by the Dutch CBT delusionists, who are really good at creatively huzzling figures and no editor can count or does any proper reviewing or editing as that is too much hazzle, and these Dutch delusionists claim on a daily base that CBT cures 70% of patients with ME.

Well they call it CFS as we all know and the seasoning behind that is simple. You see that is their way out by the time there is a ME test available so then they can say, look, we told you, we were only talking about CFS......

Anyway, 001/7 has just send me an email with a picture of his car, and if you have a good look you will see a few things.

First of all you can see that he is not a real Bond anymore and that is why the Aston had to make way for a cheaper car.....

Secondly he has told me that CBT is just as Toxic as it shows on the Dr Speedy CBT 2008 Calendar, which is part of an exclusive Dr Speedy line of merchandising which rivals Cristiano Ronaldo and other big time superstars and their line of stuff....

And thirdly 001/7 has send me prove of how dangerous CBT is if you have ME, just have a look at the picture of his car, dreadful...........

Sorry 001/7 but I told you, CBT for ME is just as toxic as Agent Orange for .....

Saturday, April 12, 2008

As this is the main idea from many doctors about ME, reinforced and fed by the CBT delusionists, I was thinking about the RSM and its conference to make things even worse for Patients with ME.

Denial is the most common strategy by the CBT Delusionists who rule the conference as we know and to sum up their knowledge of ME, let me just mention a few things:

"PRISMA is a multi-national healthcare company of which Wessely is a member of the Supervisory Board; it works with insurance companies and with the NHS to arrange compulsory “rehabilitation” programmes for claimants with “illnesses of modern life”. It uses Wessely’s favoured regime of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) that is designed to change a patient’s behaviour, thought processes and what Wessely deems to be patients’ “aberrant beliefs” that they are physically sick.

Non-biased studies of CBT have found that it did not prove to be an effective intervention (see the results of a randomised controlled trial by Marcus Huibers and Anna Beurskens in The British Journal of Psychiatry: 2004:184:240-246)."

Now let me also quote one of the CBT leaders who stated in the same inquiry:“I represent an extremely large and really quite brilliant group of people who have assembled at King’s”. IE, brilliant in getting the ELEVEN million for silly therapy...

He also said: that ME and GWS are “illnesses of modern life” yet he also likes to use SAME OLD SAME OLD, ie hysteria and neurathenia of the past are now people with ME. Now hysteria and neurathenia used to be MS and that is a dreadful disease but not the same as ME.

Furthermore ME can't be an old disease and the at the same time an illness of modern life. But that is the PSYCHIATRIC TOMBOLA as used by the delusional psychiatrists at its best.

A great quote from the same man is:

“We are in 1994. For ten years I had been running a research unit specialising in chronic fatigue and the problems of people who are tired all the time”.

So after 10 years of denial there it is, he is always talking about people who are Tired all the time. Well as we all know, they have a problem but it is not ME. But that is professor CBT for you, who denies anything and everything.

So as you know I am bedridden due to this non existent illness, and I can't be at the RSM delusional conference of deniability, so I decided to do a Dr Enlander and write the Dean of the RSM the following email:

"Dear Dr Stradding,

On your site it says you are organising a conference about CFS at the end of April.

“The aim of this meeting is to take a broad look at chronic fatigue syndrome, examining its nature and definition, pathophysiology”.

1. If I look at the list of speakers, I am delighted to see that you have banned everybody who knows that ME is a neurological illness as defined by the WHO since 1969.

Now which CBT psychiatrist will mention this? NICE didn’t in their ME guideline….So would it not have been a good idea to have a neurologist like Dr Chaudhuri at your conference??

2. Who will mention that in 1988 the psychiatrists changed the name from ME to CFS, then in 1991 they changed the criteria to tiredness only, and they created a completely new disease, or should I say a wastebasket.

They introduced names like Yuppie Flu and Chronic Fatigue, and now many doctors believe ME is about tiredness and they think ME, or CFS as they want to call it, equals TATT. And as you know, we as doctors hate TATT (Tired All The Time).

3. That ME is something completely different was demonstrated for example by Dr Ramsay, the infectious disease specialist, in 1979 when he published a paper that demonstrated muscle abnormalities.

Now which psychiatrist will mention this and the fact that we can now demonstrate mitochondrial dysfunction in ME patients very easily with a blood test?? And the worse the test results the worse the ME. And I realise that CBT is so good that we can actually talk the mitochondria back to normal…

4. Who will mention that ME patients are not allowed to be blood donors???

5. Who will mention that you can DIE from ME??? And no, I am not talking about suicide, I am talking about dying from ME like for example Sophia Mirza a few years ago. Did she die from false illness beliefs, malingering, suggestibility or was it just plain laziness??

6. Who will mention all the genetic abnormalities in ME patients as found by Dr Kerr??? And yes I know, a few sessions of CBT and the genes are back to normal.

7. Who will mention the fact that the MRC has turned down all research into the cause of ME and finding a cure and only sponsors CBT psychiatrists???

8. Who will mention that in children ME is now the main reason to be off school long term??? Would it not have been a good idea to have a paediatrician like Dr Speight at your conference who is the most experienced ME paediatrician in the UK???

9. Who will mention the fact that at least 25% of ME patients are bedridden and many are tube fed???

10. And even more important, who will mention Dr Stein’s excellent psychiatric ME guidelines that demonstrate that CBT is useless, or the Canadian ME guidelines that do the same???

11. And who will mention the recent article by two Dutch psychiatrists in The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, April 2007, who stated that:"The psychiatric and psychosocial hypothesis DENIES the existence of CFS as a disease entity."

And that "In CFS cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is most commonly used. This therapy, however, appears to be INEFFECTIVE in most patients.”

Which is not surprising as CBT is just as effective for a neurological illness as watching grass grow…. which is a lot cheaper actually…

So why has the RSM, a Society of Medicine as I always thought, not lived up to its own conclusion of 1978:

“it is hoped that as a result of the meeting, sufferers from this miserable illness will, in future, be more sympathetically managed.”

The only thing that the CBT psychiatrists have done is made the suffering of ME patients worse and now you at the RSM are kindly hosting their yearly psychiatric conference.

But please remember that you or your loved ones can get ME as well and then you will realise, just as I have learned the hard way, that CBT is all about denying ME as a severe and debilitating physical illness, and that you are now supporting them, and denying ME just like they have done with MS, TBC and many other physical illnesses in the past.

But let me add that I hope that you or your loved once will not get ME as I now know what a delightful business this is.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

"When Hannah Poling was 19 months old she was administered 9 vaccines simultaneously and just 48 hours afterwards, her health began to deteriorate. She developed a fever and her temperature soared to 38.9°C. She cried inconsolably, was irritable, lethargic and refused to walk.

Over the next 4 months her growth and movement decreased, rashes appeared on her abdomen and she began to display autistic behaviours including fixation on television, poor eye contact, spinning and disrupted sleep.

Tests and muscle biopsy carried out by her father (a neurologist at John Hopkins University in the USA) and his colleagues indicated specific genetic mutations in her mitochondrial DNA (mt-DNA), Type 1 muscle fibre atrophy and abnormal levels of various metabolic products in her blood stream (elevated lactic acid, serum creatine kinase level, and aspartate aminotransferase). The findings were published in the Journal of Clinical Pathology.

In 2007, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) made the decision to award the Poling family compensation from the federal vaccine injury fund after they conceded that immunisations given to her at 19 months old had aggravated a rare underlying mitochondrial condition that resulted in a brain disorder.

Faulty metabolic and mitochondrial processes are also well documented in patients labelled with ME/CFS and this may be due to an inherited mitochondrial disorder and/or exposure to environmental pollutants and/or pathogens with a particular toxicity for mitochondrial DNA (mt-DNA).

This hypothesis may better account for symptoms than that of the ‘aberrant immune response’ to environments that normal controls are able to withstand.

The hypothesis that ‘stressors’ (including psychological stress) cause an aberrant immune response is not born out by patients’ experience with psychosocial treatments (e.g. tricyclic anti-depressants, CBT/GET). Patients have not reported positive results with such treatments in fact the opposite, with many claiming it made their symptoms worse.

This is not surprising if there is insufficient cellular energy available in the mitochondria to cope with the demands of exercise programmes and furthermore it is known that drugs such as Amitriptyline and Prozac can make mitochondrial functioning worse.

Combining exercise with such drugs

therefore seems to be the worst possible treatment to offer those with underlying mitochondrial dysfunctions and poor energy production.

Cellular energy is produced inside the ‘mitochondria’, which are the cells’ power houses.

Various tests for metabolic and mitochondrial status are now available, some via the NHS but they are not all included in the NICE CFS/ME Guidelines. Some are available privately and have been shown to be predictive of the level of patient disability.

Dr Thomas Insel stated that:‘when you have a genetic lesion in your mitochondrial DNA you′re likely to develop a whole range of problems due to environmental stressors.’

Even Prof. Simon Wessely has admitted, according to an attendee’s report of a lecture that he gave at Gresham College, London during January 2006, that some evidence had been found linking both the type and the quantity of vaccines administered to Gulf War soldiers with illness.

In particular, that the combination of the anthrax vaccines and pertussis (Whooping Cough) given to soldiers was ‘suspect’.

There are extensive studies of mitochondrial dysfunction in ME/CFS-labelled patients. The UK physician, Dr Melvin Ramsay, who first used the term Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) made a study with, Dr Alan Rundle, consultant pathologist at St Lawrence’s Hospital, Caterham, Surrey, UK published a study in the Postgraduate Medical Journal of December 1979.

The study looked at blood levels of serum myoglobin and various enzymes that showed a similar biochemical pattern to Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

Infections are known to cause oxidative stress regardless of any underlying genetic predisposition, and may account for the epidemic occurrence of ME/CFS. The concept of ‘mito-pathogens’ (mitoviruses, mitoviroids and mitobacteria) with a particular toxicity towards mitochondria have been proposed.

In addition some pathogens are ‘energy parasites’ and rapidly use ATP made by the mitochondria because they are unable to make their own. Examples include Chlamydia Pneumonaie (CPN), Rickettsial pathogens and certain viruses.

Utilisation of these available tests may be very useful for helping to establish that ME/CFS has been correctly diagnosed and relates to the cardinal feature of ‘exercise intolerance’ as outlined in both the Ramsay criteria and Canadian Guidelines.

In many instances patients turn to private testing to elucidate the abnormalities in their cases and access appropriate healthcare at their own expense. That patients are able to find abnormal test results when NICE assure doctors that if the recommended panel is negative, nothing further is necessary, is proof alone that the Guidelines on diagnosis are invalid if not dangerous.

These are some of the pivotal reasons why the NICE Guidelines for CFS/ME are being challenged via the One Click Judicial Review.

A particular testing profile for ATP and mitochondrial dysfunction has been available in the private sector for some years now. Dr John McClaren Howard, the former Laboratory Director of Biolab UK in London, developed this ‘ATP profile’ which looks at several parts of mitochondrial function including ATP production, recycle and presence of toxins.

These tests were commercially available from Biolab UK in London up until Dr McClaren-Howard’s retirement from Biolab in 2007. He now offers the tests through a new company called ‘Acumen’ based in the South West of England, UK. A GP referral is essential in order to be able to access the tests.

A patient advocate, Craig Robinson who collected and analysed these ATP results, found a high correlation with the level of patient disability as reported in his excellent Citizen’s paper.

TreatmentsCare must be taken in prescribing treatments to those with mitochondrial or metabolic disease and dysfunctions and subsequent poor ATP production. Several reports of adverse events and fatalities of drugs including amitriptyline, Prozac and statins have appeared in patients with these conditions.

"Plenty of people are still dying of diseases which other people do not believe." (Dr. M.N.C. Dukes).CBT and GET for ME: "There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity."

Robertson Davies

THE NICEGUIDELINES BLOG VERSUS THE NICEGUIDELINES

These are NOT the NICEGuidelines. This is "The NICEGUIDELINES BLOG." What are the differences:

The NICE Guidelines are biased publications based on the GOBSART (Good Old Boys Sitting Around a Table) approach.

This Blog however is not only evidence based but also uses critical reading to judge papers and articles. I also use common sense and listen to others. And finally I read both psychiatric and medical evidence and opinions from around the world to come to a conclusion.

I’m not sponsored by anybody or paid by whatever company as seems to be the norm with many psycho people who publish the same article almost on a weekly base.

So if you value an opinion, formed as a result of participating in many ME activities, for example being bed bound for years, you have come to the right BLOG. All these activities have allowed me to form an opinion as a Doctor and as a Patient. And that is important as the voice of the latter is discarded by many including NICE.

If you don’t read this blog, you will miss out on “accredited” medical education. If you do read it, you may actually become a doctor who doesn’t stop thinking or forgets to ask critical questions. Many good things, including satisfied patients are at your command.

So, if you arrived here for the straightforward GOBSART approach, I will disappoint you. If you are interested in forming your own opinion about ME, and other interesting things, read on!

About Dr. Speedy.

I am a Family Physician or GP as it is called in Australia or the UK. I am also an ME patient unfortunately. Bedbound that is. So at the moment I’m in private practice so to speak. I’ve got only one patient, ME, or is it me?

I graduated as a doctor a long time ago, and I am the founder and editor of The NICEGUIDELINES BLOG, an internet based ME BLOG that is devoted to critical reading and cheering you or ME up.

I have the following conflict of interest: I would like to get better and see that the wasting of public money on CBT (talk therapy for a neurological disease, really helpful) and other silly therapies for ME stops, and will be used in better ways.

My goal has always been to help, and if possible, cure patients. With this disease you will soon find out that many psychiatrists and psychologists are only in it to make money and get their name in the spotlight. And what happens to and with the patients is irrelevant.

I stand to benefit both mentally, physically and also financially if this silliness would stop, and I would get my health back, and I can go back to work and have a normal life again. Please evaluate my postings with this in mind! And remember, there are also (lots of) psychiatrists and psychologists who haven’t switched their brain off.